Journal of Caring Sciences
Volume:12 Issue: 1, Mar 2023

Nurses use physical touch to interact with patients and address their needs. Human touch benefits social development, stress/anxiety reduction, and rapport building. Touch has been a part of nursing care for centuries, however nurses’ perceptions of expressive touch are not easily ascertained from the literature. Literature currently offers one review on the perceptions of various medical professionals regarding touch of all kinds. No reviews specific to the nurses’ perception of expressive touch exist. This integrative review provides a greater understanding of nurses’ perceptions of expressive touch.

Using Cooper’s steps for integrative review, CINAHL, Medline, Academic Search Premier, and Complimentary Index were searched from 2000-2022; using search term expressive touch or caring touch or compassionate touch and nurse/nurses/nursing and perception or perspective.

Of 283 articles identified, 22 articles remained for full-text review after duplicate removal and application of inclusion/exclusion criteria. Five topics on nurses’ perceptions of expressive touch were identified: Comfort with touch and job satisfaction, expressive touch as an essential part of nursing practice, expressive touch as a form of compassion and/or communication, the impact of expressive touch on the humanization of patients in the nurses’ perception, and nurse discomfort with expressive touch.

This integrative review provides findings that assist in understanding nurses’ perceptions of expressive touch. Further research should examine the impact of gender, education, and experiences on nurses’ perceptions as they use expressive touch in nursing practice.

The congenital cardiac diseases (CHDs) are the leading cause of death in children. The CHDs detection and management have greatly improved over the past few decades. This review aimed to assess the effectiveness of early enteral nutrition (EEN) on postoperative outcomes in infants undergoing congenital cardiac surgery.

Electronic databases PubMed, Clinical Key, UpToDate, the Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were searched for studies published in the English language, between 2004 and 2021. This review carried out based on PRISMA statement and studies qualities assessed using “Downs and Black score”. Hospital stay, intensive care unit (ICU) stay, mechanical ventilation support, aortic cross clamping and cardiopulmonary bypass were as primary outcomes. Similarly infections, vomiting and mortality were as secondary outcomes of included studies.

This review consists of 887 infants from 10 studies. Of these, 470 infants were assigned to the intervention group and 417 to the control group. The post-operative hospital stay shorted in the EEN group than the control group (SMD = -0.63, 95% CI: -1.03 to -0.22, P = 0.0, I2 = 87%). Similarly, EEN group lessen the ICU stay (SMD = -0.15, 95% CI: -0.42, 0.11, P = 0.0, I2 = 71%), mechanical ventilation support (SMD = -0.31, 95% CI: -0.51, -08, P = 0.08, I2 = 47%), aortic cross clamping (SMD = -0.92, 95% CI: -0.31, 2.4, P = 0.00, I2 = 96%), and cardiopulmonary bypass (SMD = -0.0, 95% CI: -0.42 to 43, P = 0.00, I2 = 71%). Secondary postoperative complications such as infections (RR = 0.68, 95% CI: 0.43 to 1.08, P = 0.40, I2 = 3%). vomiting (RR = 1.47, 95% CI: 0.80 to 2.69, P = 0.90, I2 = 0%) and postoperative mortality (RR = 0.42, 95% CI: 0.03 to 5.82, P = 0.00: I2 = 80%) significantly reduced.

Postoperative outcomes were improved in the intervention group compared to the control group, including shorter hospital stays, ICU stays, mechanical ventilation, and less postoperative complications.

Care is the fundamental fact of nursing. In recent years, poor care is discussed frequently in articles and newspapers, however health care providers do not have a common understanding of this concept. Therefore the purpose of this paper was to clarify the concept of poor care in nursing and highlight the importance of tackling this issue.

The concept was analyzed using the 8-step Walker and Avant’s method. The SCOPUS, PubMed, ISI, and Embase databases were searched with the keywords “poor care” and “poor nursing care” in the titles and abstracts of articles. Of 550 sources found in the initial survey, 32 articles were finally included in the study.

Poor care attributes include poor evaluation, inadequate or inappropriate patient management, and delay, treating, and referring patients to other departments. These attributes are caused by antecedents of nursing workload, the complexity of patient conditions, inappropriate interactions, insufficient workforce, and educational and organizational factors.

Poor care is a general concept that includes undesirable and unacceptable standards for receiving or providing clinical and interpersonal health services. Poor care includes eliminating planned activities or performing unplanned activities that are experienced by the patient, health care workers, or caregivers.

Parturient women’s privacy preservation and respectful maternity care (RMC) in delivery room is an important principle in the high quality of midwifery care to achieve maternal satisfaction and positive childbirth experience. Hence, it is essential to make natural vaginal delivery (NVD) a positive experience and increase the mothers’ satisfaction. This study aimed to investigate the privacy preservation of parturient women’s in the delivery room.

Using conventional content analysis, this qualitative study was conducted from June 2018 to December 2020 at two hospitals and three health centers in Shahroud, Iran. Purposeful sampling was employed and it was continued till data saturation through in-depth interviews with 37 participants.

The results of interviews with 21 women with NVD experience and 16 maternity health service providers resulted in the extraction of four themes including physical, spiritualmental, informational, and social privacy.

Various mechanisms were found to promote the privacy and satisfaction of parturient women in the delivery room. They included the necessity continuous education, monitoring about mother’s privacy preservation and intervention to improve effective communication skills among staff in delivery rooms.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now a major public health crisis in the world. Nurses as key members of professional are exposed the most challenges caused by COVID19. Knowledgeable nurses’ experiences can provide appropriate solutions to increase the quality of care and improve the health of the society. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of nurses’ caring for patients with COVID-19.

12 nurses participated in this phenomenological study. We performed purposeful sampling and in-depth face-to-face and semi-structured individual interviews for collecting data. Qualitative data, was analyzed by the 6-step Van Manen hermeneutic phenomenology.

After data analysis, the mean (SD) age of study participants was 32.25 (5.62) years and their mean work experience was 9.75 (5.39) years. From the analysis of data obtained from interviews with nurses working in COVID-19 wards, 1050 primary codes, 17 subthemes and 5 themes were extracted. Main themes include: sincere service, patient oppression, emotional instability, suspension and relaxation.

Analysis of data in this study suggested that the nurses who care patients in COVID-19 pandemic, faced many professional and psychological challenges. Healthcare managers should plan for psychological support services for the nurses.

In recent years, health care has faced many changes. Thereupon, it would be beneficial to investigate the quality of midwifery care and its related factors. Many factors contribute to the provision of quality care, and recognizing factors to ensure the quality of midwifery care. This qualitative study was conducted to explain the factors that affect the provision and quality of midwifery care.

This qualitative study with content analysis approach was conducted between June 2017 and February 2018 on 15 midwives working in private and public maternity hospitals in the city of Qom. The participants were selected by purposeful sampling. Semi-structured and in-depth interviews were performed with open ended questions to find out how midwives describe high quality midwifery care. Data were analyzed by conventional content analysis method through MAXQDA-11 software.

The findings of this study revealed two main themes, including individual factors (personal efficiency, staffs’ psychological status, value-centeredness, cultural-educational issues, and professional attachment), and professional-organizational factors (professional characteristics, patient characteristics, personal-professional welfare, professional empowerment system, value-centered culture of organization, and organizational monitoring and evaluation).

The results of this study showed that individual and professional factors are associated with the quality of midwifery care. Midwives who participated in this study believed that providing high quality midwifery care requires a broad range of prerequisites. Since high quality midwifery care decreases maternal and infant mortality and morbidity, it is imperative for policymakers to pay attention to all the factors that contribute to the quality of midwifery care.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a considerable challenge for infected patients who require more attention for recovery. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the lived experience of patients with COVID-19.

This qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological study was conducted in the southeast of Iran from March to May 2020. The data were purposefully collected from 16 patients with COVID-19. Data were collected using in-depth semi-structured telephone interviews and analyzed using the Van Manen method.

The lived experiences of patients were categorized into five themes, including incredible clinical symptoms of COVID-19, horror and stigma, bad memories of hospitalization, trust in God and hope as recovery agents from COVID-19, and reborn after recovery from COVID-19.

Patients with COVID-19 have experienced variety of physical and psychosocial challenges. Health care providers have to supply appropriate strategies to fulfill the infected patients needs in such a crisis.

Traditional medicine are popular treatments among families of children with cancer. This study was designed to identify the behaviors, beliefs, and values of families and health care providers for the use of traditional medicine in pediatric oncology.

This study was conducted with a focus on ethnography approach in the oncology department of a pediatric subspecialty hospital in northeastern of Iran from September 2021 to June 2022. A total of 20 key informants were observed and interviewed formally and informally. The Miles and Huberman (1994) approach was used for data analysis.

Finally, two main cultural themes were emerged, including the blame of traditional herbal medicine and the synergy of rituals with modern therapies. Families use traditional medicine based on values passed down from generation to generation, while health care providers make evidence-based decisions.

The results of the present study represent the conflict between health care providers and families in the use of medicinal herbs. The findings allow care providers to be aware of the beliefs and values of children caregivers to make the right decision about traditional medicine use.

Chest pain is an unpleasant and the most common symptom in patients suffering from unstable angina. This study was implemented to investigate the effect of Thai massage on severity of pain in patients with unstable angina.

This study was a randomized controlled clinical trial that carried out on 70 patients with unstable angina who had been hospitalized in hospital affiliated to Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical sciences, Ahvaz, Iran. The participants were allocated randomly to either the intervention (n = 35) or control group (n = 35) between August 1, 2016 and April 30, 2017. The patients in the intervention group received routine care beside and Thai massage with the duration of 30 minutes in two consecutive days. The patients in the control group received routine care. The intensity of pain was assessed by using the numeric rating scale, five minutes before and immediately, 15, 30 and 60 minutes after the intervention. The independent t-test and repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analysis data through SPSS 13.

After the intervention, the severity of pain was significantly diminished by about four measurement points (P = 0.001) with the linear pattern of pain reduction. Nonetheless, in the control group, no statistically significant difference in the intensity of pain was found.

This study showed that Thai massage as non-invasive approach, concomitant with standard nursing care, has the potential to decrease chest pain. Nurses should be taught about pain relief methods for improving the quality of patient care.